Today is the last day of Black
History Month and it's important
the conversation about diversity and
inclusion continue beyond just February.
Joining us in our conversation this morning
is our Nine News racial equity expert,
Doctor Rose Marie Allen.
Doctor Allen, good morning to you.
Good morning.
Well, thank you very much for being with us
because we think this is certainly important.
I want to get to a question that
a lot of people.
It was pretty controversial,
but I think it's important
that we address it.
They it's this question out there
of why we even celebrate Black
History Month in the 1st place
and if it divides our country
more than it actually helps.
What would you respond to this?
Well, Jordan and I would say that Black
History Month is more important today than
it was way back in the 1920s when Carter
G Woodson started Black History Week.
And one of the reasons is so important is
because the history and contributions. A.
Black Americans have not been elevated.
This is an effort to elevate those
contributions across all sectors.
Academics, science, engineering, arts,
education. So no, it doesn't divide us.
And if we think about black history.
Black history is American history.
And I hope I didn't upset
anybody by asking that question.
I think it's important though that
we're able to respond to those that
criticism you know with with appropriate
answers there you were saying it's
more important now than ever,
you know personally for you what have
you seen the impacts on as we continue
to celebrate it year after year.
But what I'm seeing today that's
very frightening is this attempt
to revise any race black history
right now when we look at what's
happening across the country,
23 states have promoted.
Legislation to ban discussions
around black history,
the content and teaching black history,
as well as many other dimensions of
diversity and is very frightening
when you think about the fact that
300 books by black authors have
been banned from our libraries,
and those are just the books
by black authors,
that doesn't include the books that are
written by other authors on black history.
So we need to all be concerned
and we need to stand up and
fight against this revisionist.
Type of history and the erasure of
dimensions of diversity in our society.
And this is really a chance to
educate a lot of people that may
not learn about some of this stuff
beyond just February. Absolutely.
When you think about Black History
Month as we move into the future,
where do you see it going?
You know, I'm hoping that the history
and contributions of African Americans,
but all people in society
will be embedded in history.
This is America's history.
But we have such a tenuous.
Relationship with the history
as it relates to African
Americans and indigenous people,
because it's painful.
But Jordan, if we could peel back
the onion skin and really take
a good look at how we got here,
do the work of repairing the harm and
embedding that history into everything,
then we won't need Black History
Month or Native American History
Month or Hispanic History Month.
We will celebrate the true history
of our country and our society.
I love that, you know.
One thing I feel like we learn
every time we celebrate Black
History Month is we go into
different pockets of the culture.
You know, it's no longer
viewed as just a monolith.
It's now we explore black women culture.
We explore black LGBTQ plus culture.
You know, we had a A history of black
cooking on our show this morning.
You learned so many different
facets. Isn't it amazing?
And and it's scary when you look at
what the College Board just did when
they took out a lot of content about
black history and some of that was black
feminism and the black queer experience.
I mean we are such a multi dimensional
people that it's just shameful that we,
we would erase that much of our history.
And it's nice to see it being embedded
into other parts like pride where we
learn about you know the importance
of of of black culture in the LGBTQ
plus rights that we have today.
Absolutely. It's very interesting.
Well, Doctor Alan, we appreciate
you being with us this morning.
Thank you so much for having.
Yeah, thank you.